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Print Price: $57.99

Format:
Paperback
272 pp.
6.125" x 9.25"

ISBN-13:
9780190455873

Copyright Year:
2018

Imprint: OUP US

Everyman in Vietnam: A Soldier's Journey into the Quagmire

Michael Adas and Joseph J. Gilch

Everyman in Vietnam is an accessible and multi-dimensional way to convey an understanding of the nature and enduring significance of the Vietnam conflict for students and a broader reading public. Its vivid, intimate, and accessible account of an ordinary American soldier in Vietnam offers a unique glimpse into the complexities and contradictions of the American intervention in Vietnam. The focus on an individual soldier - Jimmy Gilch - and the milieu from which he came, along with the novel use of his cache of letters written home, make this a unique contribution to the historical literature on the Vietnam War. The movement back and forth between the larger history of the war and the experiences of Jimmy Gilch fighting in a very particular place at a particular time will give readers a sense of the concrete nature of the war in Vietnam that is often absent in more general treatments

Readership : For undergraduate students in American History, the Sixties, the Vietnam War, or American Military History, as well for general readers interested in American History since 1945.

Reviews

"In this compelling and moving book, two master historians help us understand as never before the real tragedy of the American war in Vietnam as they bring to life the service of Private Jimmy Gilch against the sweep of American, Vietnamese and global histories of the mid-twentieth century."
--Mark Bradley, The University of Chicago
"Everyman in Vietnam is the most intimate account of the Vietnam War available today. Witten with great artistry and power, the author's story of Jimmy Gilch and his family's encounter with one of America's most vicious wars casts a powerful light not just on the conflict but on the entire social fabric of the US in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a perfect vehicle for teaching the current generation, so fully protected from the experience of war, what Vietnam was all about."
--Marilyn Young, New York University

Everyman in Vietnam: A Soldier's Journey Into the Quagmire
List of Maps
Acronyms and Key Terms
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Prologue: In the Ho Bo Woods: June 28, 1966
Introduction
1. Divergent Trajectories: America and Vietnam after World War II
The Promise of Prosperity
Struggle to Liberate a Shattered Land
Early U.S. Interventions in Indochina
Exemplar of Modernity
2. Cold War Convergences
Flawed Settlement and a Nation Divided
Coming of Age in Cold War America
The Invention of South Vietnam
The Mounting Costs of Containment
Rebel Without A Cause
3. The Making of a Quagmire
Draft Decisions
Lyndon Johnson's Dilemmas
Basic Training: Fort Dix, New Jersey, September 1965
Renewing the War for Independence
Off to War, January 1966
4. Into the Quagmire
Angst and Escalation
Contested Ground
Arrival in Nam, February 1966
Terms of Engagement
In Pursuit of an Elusive Enemy, Late February 1966
5. In Dubious Battle
The Lessons of Ia Drang
The Good Soldier, March 1966
Rethinking the Path to Liberation
Ambivalence and Disillusionment, March1966
McNamara's Predicament
Finding His Own Mission, March - April 1966
6. The Price of Attrition
Surviving the Stalemate, April, 1966
An Unwinnable War
Losing Hope, Mid-April - Early May
Confounding the Colossus
Waiting for Leave, June - July 1966
7. Return to Filhol, Late July, 1966
Epilogue
Timeline
Sample Letters
Notes
Selected Sources Consulted
Credits
Index

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Michael Adas is the Abraham E. Voorhees Professor and Board of Governors' Chair at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. Adas' writings have been translated into seven languages, and he was awarded the Toynbee Prize for his contributions to global history in 2013.

Joseph J. Gilch is currently working to complete his graduate degree in Global and Comparative History at Rutgers University. His reading and writing has focused on American and global military history, and resistance and revolution in the Modern Middle East. His senior thesis on, "Everyman in Vietnam: A Soldier's Journey Through the Quagmire," won multiple departmental prizes, and the university-wide Henry Rutgers Scholar Award.

Writing History - William Kelleher Storey and Towser Jones
The Vietnam War - Assoc. Professor Mark Atwood Lawrence

Special Features

The story of "everyman" in Vietnam is brought to life through the personal letters of Private James Gilch, the late-uncle of co-author Joseph Gilch. This exceptional collection of letters reveals connections between the personal account of Jimmy Gilch's time in Vietnam, the criteria by which young Americans were selected to go into battle, and the nature of the war that made it such a harrowing ordeal for combatants on all sides as well as for Vietnamese civilians.
In contrast to memoirs and oral testimony published or narrated after the war, Jimmy Gilch's letters were written in "the here and now." They are raw, unscripted, deeply personal, and honest. They relate immediate feelings and responses that are often overlooked or differ significantly from those in accounts written or recorded after the war. Taken together, Jimmy's letters build a narrative of the conflict that viscerally conveys its carnage and confusion, the weariness and constant strain of the soldiers engaged, the excitement of battle and boring routine of camp life, and his obsession with the ever-present possibility of death.
Weaves a macro perspective of American foreign policy during the Vietnam War, with the individual-level perspective of one of the many soldiers who lived and died in the "quagmire". Everyman in Vietnam explores the history of the multinational and global processes that led to the U.S. interventions, the political calculations on opposing sides that shaped successive decisions for military escalation, and Vietnamese perspectives on the conflict.
Intersperses accounts of Jimmy's growing years and wartime experiences within chapters among accounts of divergent post-World War II histories, interactions, and eventual conflict between the United States and Vietnam. This approach makes it possible to compare the contrasting sociocultural and geopolitical factors that led to successive - and increasingly violent - American interventions with those that enabled the successful resistance of the Vietnamese to efforts to subvert their long quest for liberation and national unity.
Each of the chapters is prefaced by epigraphs and images intended to foreshadow the perspectives, themes, and events covered therein. Discussions of varying perspectives and the involvement of participants at different political and socioeconomic levels are also linked by recurrent themes. These include the contrasts in wealth, resources, and power that set highly-industrialized, affluent America apart from Vietnam - a peasant-based, war-ravaged, postcolonial society and divided nation. Asymmetry in terms of material abundance was also manifested in the high-tech, massive firepower unleashed by the U.S. military in a failed effort to defeat both guerrilla-based resistance to the regime in South Vietnam and regular communist forces from the North.
The collaboration between Michael Adas and Joseph Gilch, and the backstory surrounding Jimmy Gilch's letters, offers an instructive example of the the craft of history in action.